


Third Sex

by AxeMeAboutAxinomancy



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Knotting, M/M, Omega Verse, Podfic Available
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-22
Updated: 2014-07-22
Packaged: 2018-02-09 17:32:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1991658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy/pseuds/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson keeps a promise to Holmes, writing about their first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Sex

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to TSylvestris for wonderfully attentive beta reading, as well as the impetus for writing this in the first place.

_I would never write of this, never would dream of doing so, but that Holmes has made me promise it. I promised to write of it, for his eyes alone, fully and honestly and without unnecessary euphemism. I will keep this promise, but first I must lay out, in the way that I am accustomed, how it happened._  
  
I was aboard the train when I knew I must go home again.  
  
I had been just about to sit down, wishing Holmes were there with me on the long journey, seated opposite so that I could look at him, laughing easily, talking about the things only he could see. That was when I realised he must be ill, that he had sent me away on purpose.  
  
Why would he send me away when he was ill? Though he teased me, he trusted my doctoring skills enough to suffer my stitching many wounds.  
  
What if he were truly ill, desperately ill, and knew there was nothing I could do to help? He would send me away then, would he not? He would send me far away, just as he was doing now.  
  
Trying to do, for I disembarked from the train just as it started moving. My case was heavy, as I had expected to be gone for a week, and weighed down as I was by it, my landing on the platform jarred my injured leg horribly. I had to stand there for several minutes before I could try to walk.  
  
Did he send me away because he thought he was dying? The concern caused me physical pain that quite distracted me from my damaged limb.  
  
It took me much longer than it should have done to get home to Baker Street. When I drew near enough to see that Mrs Hudson's windows were dark with no lamps lit behind the curtains, I was certain:  he had sent her away, too, and was surely like to die.  
  
I ought to have understood something from the growing disorder of my thoughts, but that very disorder rendered me less perceptive. It has always been natural to feel protective of Holmes, I told myself. His genius is near divine, but his body is mortal. Who better than a doctor to be that man's friend?  
  
Some doctor, I,  to have lived with a man for years and not understood his nature.  
  
I unlocked the door, and locked it again behind me. I went up the stairs softly, fearing what I might find.  
  
I found Holmes, all right, in his nightshirt.  
  
But he was not dying.  
  
For one moment, I deluded myself that what I saw was a fever. That he was ill, but perhaps not yet beyond help, perhaps I might yet save him. He did look terribly thin, more so even than usual.  
  
I took a deep breath, and then, even befuddled, I could not help but know.  
  
The scent in the room was so powerful that it hung in the air like color and light. I drank of it and felt my wits sway. Dear God.  
  
"John," he said when he saw me. Had he ever called me that before, just that? I took a step forward, but his expression was not welcoming. He was dismayed to see me. He clutched at his poor nightshirt as though to draw it around himself like a coat, but it was  damp and clung pitifully to his legs.  
  
This detail, which should have stirred in me only the thoughts of a doctor, instead stirred lust in me, in the way a sharp slap stirs pain. The scent of him dashed hard across my face, and I gasped in more of it.  
  
I did not feel myself able to speak. My throat had tightened and my heart drummed a quick march.  
  
"I tried to send you away," he was saying as I found myself several steps closer to him. How had I got there? Had I even used the walking stick? I felt the pain in my leg, but I could not make myself care about it.  
  
"Are you trying to send me away now?" I asked, and the question sounded, to my own ears, like a challenge, rather than the question I had meant. I was trembling like a dog at the end of its leash. I had been roused to lust so quickly I could not even be ashamed, it was so physical, inevitable, like the fluid soaking his nightshirt. I knew what it was, I knew what it was for.  
  
I had heard of the second and third sexes, dispensed with so coldly in that single medical lecture so long ago. I was so young then, and I had naturally paid a bit more attention to the details about one mutation than the other. One was very much easier than the other to hide, and I had by far the easier part. But until now, Holmes had hidden this from me, from me who watched and studied him and wanted him. He had hidden this from my eyes and I had let him. I could have scented the truth of it, but that I let him send me away from time to time, when I would rather have been with him.  
  
He had not replied to my question by the time I was gripping the front of his nightshirt. It felt so thin, so insubstantial in my hand. It twisted in a sort of spiral. And above this, his throat, trembling with his breath and frantic heartbeat...  
  
"John," he said, and I could see, I was so close I could see how he tried to maintain his composure, his normal air of dignity. But that air was scented now with the promise of heat and joining and ecstatic climax as blatantly as though written out, there for anyone to read if they but breathed it in.  
  
"I want to stay," I said. "Will you let me?"  
  
These respectful-looking words were not delivered calmly. How could they have been? My cock was awakened and straining, uncomfortable within the constraints of my clothing. My voice was harsh and abrupt.  
  
Never had I spoken to Holmes in such a tone. My instinct, at any other time, would have been to submit to his brilliance as he wielded it so artfully. But this was a matter of the body and it was known between us that matters of the body were my concern. It was _known_.  
  
"Please, John."  
  
"Please, what? Yes, or no?"  
  
Never, never did I get an answer to this question in words. His answer was to press his mouth to mine and try to kiss me.  
  
I say "try", for he did not seem to be very good at it. I would have been terribly surprised if he had been. How could Sherlock Holmes see any sense in kissing, unless for some case? And who could expect nuance of him now?  
  
I released his nightshirt only because he was pressed against me, and my hand found his hip, sharp through the thin fabric. And hot, hot as any iron in a fire, was the last thought in my mind before the bestial madness took me.  
  
I showed him, roughly, how I liked kissing, and then when his long-fingered hands, usually so deft, fumbled with my clothing, I took it off myself, then was upon him before he could draw off his nightshirt. I did not care. It was nothing, the shirt, I could have torn it with my hands, but it was easy enough to ruck up.  
  
Later, much later, when my wits returned, I would seek to learn every inch of his skin as a decent lover ought. But in that moment I did not care, did not care. If he had pushed at me and begged No, I would not have cared. I am ashamed to write it but it must be written.  
  
He did not push or beg No, however. He felt the frenzy just as I did, writhed enticingly as I pushed the nightshirt up to bare him below the waist.  
  
But what was I doing? The sitting room was no fit place. I knew by instinct that we needed some _place_ , some den into which we could crawl, that I might crawl into him. "Bed," I croaked, starting to pull him toward his room, but he balked. I was already growling in frustration before I heard him aright.  
  
"Not my bed," he panted, "Please. The bath."  
  
I did not see till later what sense this made. At the time, I was only willing to comply because the bath was closer.  
  
The bathtub was not very comfortable. Neither was Holmes, all points and pins and needles inside his smooth skin. But he smelled like heaven.  
  
And he was heaven, I found suddenly, inside him. Instinct made me want him to turn round, away from me -- I longed to worry the back of his neck with my teeth. But instead he sat astride me in the bathtub and looked down into my face. I could scarcely recognise him as the man he was and is. I was not, myself, the man I was and am. We were animals, struggling together, caught by mating urges whilst trespassing in a human house.  
  
Hot and silky tight inside him, and so wet, so easy to move and move. He cried out, and it might have been in distress; I did not stop to ask. I could not speak. I knew only heat and light and friction and growling. There was a pulsing throb, so powerful it hurt, at the base of my cock as I thrust: a swelling, the animal knot of the third sex.  
  
My mate struggled atop me and chanted a sound. I think it may have been my name.  
  
 _( I can imagine even now, even now, the expression on Holmes' face, impatient with my language. I am doing my best. I am obliged to fill some of the details in, making more sense of it later than it truly had, like the retelling of a dream. But it was no dream. My wits were disordered, as though by a fever or a drug, but what happened was real.)_  
  
I could not speak. The sound of my breathing and effort was loud and frantic, becoming urgent, but it was not speech. I might have been in a seizure, for all the control I had of myself. His hands were digging into my shoulders, and I had his thighs in a bruising grip as I arched back, groaning. The knot at the base of my prick felt bigger than my own heart, hard and pulsing, and he struggled and wailed on top of me but could not get away. I had him, clasped round this awful wolfish part, and neither of us could get away.  
  
I came and came to my crisis forever, it seemed. It would not stop.  
  
I began to fear it never would stop, and this was the first sign of my mind returning to me. Holmes was slumped down atop me, shivering, clasped in my arms.  
  
It was ebbing at last, the endless rush of it. Both of us were trembling, cold and wet against the porcelain of the bathtub, hot where we were still joined. At some point I had torn his nightshirt -- I could feel flesh against mine at chest and belly.  
  
Sherlock's flesh! I gasped as though awakened from sleepwalking to find myself standing on a ledge. "What have I done?"  
  
"Ob… observe. You are still doing it."  
  
That convulsive movement was _laughter_ , and it squeezed him intimately tight around me so that I groaned.  
  
We would not be able to separate until I subsided. I knew that much about my animal nature.  
  
"I am sorry," I said, and he stopped my apologies up with a kiss. But I did not respond, and he lifted his head to look down at me. He was panting, his hair dishevelled into a disorder of dark curls, and he was so perfectly desirable that I nearly turned back into the beast again.  
  
I said, "You have known about me all along?"  
  
His face, which I had known and loved so long and well, seemed different at such very close range. I had never seen it quite like this. His eyes seemed even more intense when looked at one at a time.  
  
"I -- Yes. John, I thought -- you knew about me. About why I sent you away --"  
  
About him? Yes, of course. I had been thinking only of my own secrets. But we both had them.  
  
"Every time I am stricken I send you away. Every time I have been sure that this would be the time you came back, for… For me. But of course, you sensibly stayed away, well clear of me and my…" He looked away for the first time. "Scent."  
  
His mention of it made me breathe deeply, taking it in.  
  
"I didn't know that you didn't know," he said. "How could I not have understood this?"  
  
"There is always something," I reminded him. My arms were round his waist. He seemed so slender. He was so slender, too much so even for him. "You have been starving yourself."  
  
"Yes."  
  
I knew why. I had heard that much of what  was said about the other kind of mutation. Of course. He did not want a child. The very idea of it made me giddy with terror and yet… And yet… I swore honesty, and so admit the thought of it also excited me, in such a primitive way. He was mine, I knew now that he was mine, in all ways mine. My body knew it and was satisfied.  
  
But he had not wanted this. He had sent me away in order to avoid this, to avoid me. To avoid … this. This knot lodged inside him, holding in all that seed. What had I done? What was I still in the act of doing?  
  
It came suddenly to my attention how physically uncomfortable I was along my back, knocking into the hard edges of the bathtub. Yet at the same time, the rest of my body was stupefied with satisfaction, and humming with the precursor of more to follow.  
  
I wanted to be in a bed, but my wits were clear enough for me to see why we were not. The mattress would be ruined. And how to get rid of it, drenched in this scent? Holmes had thought through this before.  
  
A sudden, dark curiosity leapt from my mouth. "If you've expected me, what have you done all the times I didn't come back?"  
  
He let himself collapse down on top of me, and I could not see his face. "I suffered," he said.  
  
"Alone?" Even as I heard my own word I could not believe it of myself. It sounded raw, brutal, an accusation against the innocent. Holmes lifted his dark head and gazed down at me.  
  
"Yes."  
  
The dark throb of jealousy was coming from my body and not my mind. I knew that, I knew it. But it was a real, physical thing that emerged from me, like the knot.  
  
"Are you mine?" I think my hands were too rough on him, but I could not find any particular bruises on him later to suggest I had gone too far. My memory is a distorting lens.  
  
He smiled down at me as though I had done something good. "Oh, yes," he said. "There can be no doubt. But you, John. Are you not also mine?"  
  
"From the first," I said. "From the first I have been yours."  
  
There were more kisses. There were many kisses. Short and long, deep and slow, and he was rather free with his teeth for a civilised man. I gasped each time they stung me, and my hands moved of their own accord over his skin. I gloated over him as though he were a possession. But it was obvious even in that moment that he was the one possessing me.  
  
Then suddenly, in the midst of this, I subsided enough to pull free of his body, and his gasp did not cover the sound of fluids rushing out of him. I could not see his face, for his head was bowed, and he was shivering.  
  
I did not say a word. I knew he did not want me to speak. I steadied him with one hand and with the other I reached for the water tap. Uncomfortable as it might be, this bathtub would have to be the nest I had wanted. And I caught myself thinking, Next time I will --  
  
Next time? What was wrong with me?  
  
Next time. And I could feel that next time was indeed not far in the future.  
  
We both emerged from the bathtub for a little while, while we might. Holmes pulled off the tattered remains of his nightshirt and stood completely naked before me.  
  
The scent of his skin was such a bewitchment to me, I stumbled forward and clasped him close without even asking, without even a glance for silent permission. My hands moved over him as though I had a right. As I write this now, I shudder to think what a base animal I am. But the truth is what I promised to write, however ugly. The truth of it.  
  
The truth is, I put my hands on him and pressed my face against his throat, breathing and breathing him in till I felt drunk with it. His hands were on me also, but I cannot tell if he encouraged or pushed away. I cannot tell. I do not know. But his body sang a song that my body could not help but hear. I had one hand in his hair, pulling his head back. The sounds he made inflamed me.  
  
I know that he said, "John." I know that I tried to say, "Sherlock," and take that for myself also, that familiarity, but it was more of a snarl, and not said the way it should have been.  
  
That time, I had him the way I had wanted initially, with him on all fours, trembling, ready before I ever touched him. I thrust into him and did not wait to know if I were hurting him. I surged forward and strove against him, bearing him down, flattening myself against his back so that I could sink my teeth into the nape of his neck.  
  
The next thing that I can remember is being trapped inside him again, and his soft laughter in my ears.  
  
"Oh, my God," I said, and my voice was rough, sounding well used. "Holmes, I am… I am sorry. This is unforgivable."  
  
"I think, John, that you might use my name at this point."  
  
"I'm sorry, Sherlock."  
  
In a curious way I found it easier to say his given name at the end of a sentence rather than at the beginning of it. But it still felt so strange in my mouth, an impertinence, a liberty.  
  
"You need not be sorry."  
  
"I have hurt you…"  
  
"Actually," and his voice was so deep, even deeper than normal, "You have given me pleasure."  
  
I am so grateful, even now, that he said that. "I, I mean -- I bit you, you're bleeding." I touched, with shaking fingers, just below the place where I had broken the skin. I could see, however, that it was already scabbing over.  
  
He shivered, and turned his head so that I could see he was smiling. "It felt good."  
  
I sighed. I stroked my fingertips along the back of his neck. Deep inside him, I throbbed, my flesh oversensitive.  
  
"Are you an invader?" he asked, sounding breathless now. "Or a prisoner?"  
  
I wanted to ask why I could not be both of those things. An invader, then imprisoned. Prevented from making his escape. "I am an animal," I said, sidestepping his question. "A wolf."  
  
He knew to what I referred, I am certain of it.  
  
"Wolf, or wolfhound?" he asked, then sighed in clear irritation. "I preferred the other position. I prefer looking into your face."  
  
"I preferred biting you, it seems," I said. "So: wolf."  
  
"Oh, John. I liked your biting me." He angled his head so that one grey eye focused on me.  
  
"I do not understand you," I said, irritated now at his refusal to follow my meaning. He knew what I meant, of course he did, yet he kept turning it round into something different, something better. Something forgivable. And it was not forgivable.  
  
"Why did you come back?" he demanded.  
  
"Why -- I -- I thought you were dying."  
  
"I thought I might, this time," he said. "But I often think that, in the throes of it. I never died of it before, though it was a misery."  
  
"You might die of something else," I said, thinking again, unwillingly, of the possibility of a child. It had to be said. It could not be ignored.  
  
"Not that," he sighed, closing his eyes and lowering his head as though the weight of it hurt him. "You need not fear that."  
  
"Just because you starve yourself? Holmes --" I was too used to saying that name, but it felt so jarring when I could look down at his long back, his pale skin, his arse stretched so wide around my cock.  
  
" _Watson_ ," he said, and again the ghost of a laugh.  "You can hear how absurd that sounds, can you not? No, not just because I starve myself, and I don't all the time, you know. I know the cycle. I know how to make it safe. And I _am_ a chemist. Be easy, John. Not everything is changing."  
  
I reached out and trailed my hand down his spine, feeling the vertebrae that I could easily see. He shivered, and arched like a cat.  
  
We were not in the bathtub this time, but on the floor beside it. My need to have him in that position had made the tub too confining a space, more than it already was.  
  
"More, John," he murmured, and I put my other hand beside the first, experimentally massaging the muscles of his back. "Ohh," he moaned, and writhed as though I were giving him other kinds of pleasure. Which made me realise I had not even thought to do so. Wolf, not wolfhound after all, I thought, angry with my lack of care. I stroked my hands round to his chest, slid over hard nipples, down his belly. When I reached his prick, the merest touch made him flinch and pulse and cry out.  
  
Just that merest touch, and his climax… I saw him writhe, I heard his deep voice moaning, I smelt and tasted his scent with every ragged breath. And the clenching ripples I felt around my entire cock, but most powerfully at the base of the knot, made me cry out too, as another climax was wrenched from me. Not quite as powerful, but more like an aftershock. Quite powerful enough to move the earth.  
  
" _Sherlock_ ," I said, and the sidewise hint of smile he gave me was a wonder to behold.  
  
Later when we could separate again, I forced myself to give him some privacy for a little while, but to my considerable surprise he took only the minimum necessary. I had gone to fetch my dressing-gown and the blanket from my bed, but before I could get down the stairs with them I found Holmes at my door, looking peevish.  
  
"Don't leave me now, Watson," he complained, and did not seem to notice that he had reverted to old habits. It was just as well. I preferred him to use my given name in a much more intimate tone, in any case.  
  
"You know I wasn't," and dropped the things in my hands to take hold of him. He was wrapped in a bath-sheet now. I wondered if it was damp yet, so soon after he had put it on.  
  
The thought of it propelled me and him to my bed, where I unwrapped him and found out.  
  
We came together facing one another, because he liked that. Thankfully, my urge to bite him seemed satisfied. He lay on my bed and cried my (given) name as I drove into him. His long legs were over my shoulders and his long fingers clasped round the back of my neck. I was gasping, growling. It was marvellous. He was mine.  
  
And then I was knotted inside him, and I was his. This time, as I shuddered, I knew to touch him so gently he would scarcely feel it, and see what he liked from there. I was rewarded with a vision I realise now I am glad to have been asked to describe.  
  
He was the same brilliant man I have written so much about. He was the same mercurial, impossible creature, who had dominated my life so smoothly from the day we were introduced. And he was also this, this embodiment of my desire, before I had ever had any notion that we would fit like this, that we would be -- mated, I suppose I should say.  
  
He was this, with all those fine edges of brilliance cast off, a creature of instinct and animal feeling. If I was a wolf, he was a wolf's mate, and it is said that wolves mate for life. I do not know if that is true, but I know that I do.  
  
And so I have. And most of the time he is not in that particular condition, and we belong to each other in other ways. He cannot hold me captive with a knot, but his voice and hands do just as well when he is inside me.  
  
I promised to write of this, our first time together, to remember it for us both. I promised to write all of the truth, so I will write here that although of course it was a relief that Holmes was correct and we did not have a child, it was also a disappointment that I tried to hide. I wondered if God would not take the matter from Holmes’ hands, but if God was involved, He took Holmes' side. It was just as well, but I pray that I can blame my animal nature for these mawkish thoughts, and let us leave it at that.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I didn't previously appreciate omegaverse, but I have read some excellent fics. I thought it might be interesting to see it through a Victorian lens, and TSylvestris went and mentioned nightshirts, so really, what was I supposed to do? :)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Third Sex](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2205912) by [AxeMeAboutAxinomancy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy/pseuds/AxeMeAboutAxinomancy)




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